The Astrology of 2010

In 12 years of writing annual horoscopes—as of this year, one edition for every sign of the zodiac—I’ve never looked at the charts and thought: Man, I’m glad I’ve been at this for a while. Not until now, that is. Given the care with which my words are read, I do my best to get it right. I do this knowing there’s not really a right to be got. Astrology is interpretive. When I suggest what is happening in your life or what theme might offer some insight or comfort, I’m using intuition to guide me through a wide range of choices shown in the charts. So I need an internal ideal to aim for; and for me, that is following the planets in the direction of a compassionate unfolding of our personal stories. I look for the best possibilities in the aspects, and at the same time I view them as calculus equations to be resolved creatively. The planets never present a problem without offering a solution. The art of astrology is about working your way from one to the other, then putting that into words.

When the sky is really, truly, amazingly exciting, I’ve learned to take a mellow approach to describing it. It would be easy to get caught in all the promise and forget the obstacles that so often crop up on the way to getting there. Those are generally interior: false beliefs we hold about ourselves; our relationship commitments, which are not designed to help us open our potential as much as to offer a kind of delicate stability; our emotional entanglements, which eat energy but which don’t feed us; our fears and that lurking sense of not quite belonging.

I try to get underneath these and see them as the temporary situations that they are; not as actual problems. If I’ve addressed the points of resistance or the stumbling blocks, maybe I’ve helped open the way to your potential. I offer some ideas; you do the work (and often send back some great ideas). Now, part of me knows I’ve got a lot of nerve believing we can live the lives we want, when everything is getting so weird. But living a good life is economical. For anyone aware, it amounts to food, creative love, and an authentic way to connect with the world around us. That world, however, is currently a mess, and we know it’s going to get a lot messier if we don’t do our part. So why focus on reaching for the best life has to offer? Well, what else are we supposed to do? I believe we’re a lot more useful to our community and the process of humanity’s growth when we’re in creative mode rather than hung up, depressive, creatively malnourished robotic mode. Obviously. Well, maybe not so obviously. I will explain; or perhaps seduce you with a few ideas. For the past few years, the astrology has been gradually ramping up. We left behind the challenges that defined the Cheney-Bush years: aspects that came along with the stolen election and September 11 and the big hurricanes of 2005. With those aspects came plenty of crisis and growth, but even more deferral of the real material we need to be addressing. That is twofold: one, our inner struggle for healing and awareness; and two, taking part in a creative solution. Most of the cost we’ve paid is pretending we can put off taking care of inner problems that delay our lives, and pretending that we don’t make a difference.

Through 2009, the astrology shifted into what I am describing as the 2012 configuration, and we are now in a brief, relatively calm moment before the energy ramps up exponentially. True, the planets between the December solstice and mid-January are like a teacup ride. But that’s very small stuff compared to what is coming. I don’t have time for the details here, but at the end of this article I’ll tell you where to find them. Twenty-twelve configuration means that some of the most energetically packed planets are aligning with Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn: the cardinal points, or summarized in astrology as the Aries Point. The focus is on the first degree of Aries: a conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus in the first degree of Aries. This meets up with Pluto, newly in Capricorn; and Saturn, newly in Libra. That happens on June 8, with plenty of excitement along the way there.